yvynyl

Posts tagged premiere

Burnt Seeds - Dive

Roger Poulin sent me a story about some of the adventures he had spending time living and writing music in a semi-squat space in Oakland. Having lived in some half-finished warehouse spaces here in Philly myself, his stories struck a nerve. Helped that it worked perfectly with his new rippers like this one.

Hey Mark,

I hope you’re well, man. Not sure if you remember me specifically, but at one point you premiered my old band, Lotus Moons, for our tune “Facing the Sun.” Things have been a whirlwind of awful and awesome since then, and unfortunately that band came to an end. At any rate, I think you might dig some of the new stuff I have been working on under the name Burnt Seeds. Oh and for my part, I still really dig your site.

In particular, our new single “Dive” has a pretty weird and rad genesis that you might be interested in. In 2013, everything seemed to be falling to pieces around me (probably a bunch of it was my own fault, to be honest.) When my relationship of three years came to a grinding conclusion, my landlord offered to let me move into one of his new properties- a 40,000 square foot abandoned factory in Downtown Oakland that was once called the Tien Hu Knitting Factory. They used to make Eddie Bauer clothing in there, I’m pretty sure. The landlord had a half formed notion about transforming it into live-work space for artists. I would be the first resident. My head was enough of a mess to decide that right at the end of a long term relationship, I should live entirely alone in an abandoned factory. I jumped at the chance.

The place was surreal as all hell. It was partially renovated, so that like ¼ of it was kinda decent, and the rest was rubble. The basement looked like a set from the Saw franchise, with exposed rebar and a weird metal cage that housed electrical equipment. The first floor was a huge, wide open space where I believe a lot of the industrial stuff used to occur. I liked to set up my amp in the middle of the night in there and blast it as loud as possible- the reverb in that room was nuts. The room I chose to set up in used to be the managers office and was on the second floor, so it had windows that overlooked the big factory floor (but no windows to the outside, ugh.)

For some reason, I was never creeped out when I as in that space, even when I was alone- which was most of the time. By about week two, I had become fairly convinced that I was, in fact, the ghost who haunted the factory. There was a man who camped out sometimes in the front door area, and at night he would scream and pound on the chained metal doors. One night after a particularly loud bout of slamming, he started dropping flaming pieces of paper into the mail slot. My response was to turn on and off all the lights in the factory at once- this seemed to drive him off.

The only other people who were ever in there (and only during the day) ran a 3d print shop on the third floor, and also experimented with quad copter drones that would fly independently around the 3 floors of the factory on pre-programmed paths. The bathroom was far enough away that I sometimes rode my bike, and I would see drones buzzing past on my way there. I would climb up on the roof at night with my guitar and a cassette recorder, and make rambling recordings under the lights of the Oakland Tribune clock tower. Eventually, the loneliness of being in that factory, coupled with the fact that it was really REALLY not actually ready for residents, drove me out, and I moved in with some friends in a lovely West Oakland Victorian. I think that they are now converting the factory into condos.

I am on the East Coast now (DC area), and pulled out my dusty tapes not long ago. Among the dreck, I found what seemed like a bit of a gem- and thus, Dive was born.

Keep up the good work man!

Peace,

Roger

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premiere: The Interest Group - Soul Kiss (For Allies to Be)

These Philadelphians have been close to my heart for many personal reasons, but its songs like this that keep me locked into their sound. The effortlessness that conjure mixed influences yet continue to feel as fresh of their own is what fuels it ever forward.

Connect with their other work on Bndcmp.

Previously: “The Boys and The Girls”

premiere: Entire Cities - Secret Smokers

Simon Borer and his friends make some raw, welcoming indie rock in Toronto. This new piece has a lot of odd angles and sweet lime juice to whisp the edges.

Hi Mark,

We were on tour with Bruce Peninsula, and we played in Saint John, NB one night, in the living room of an old audio engineer named Toothless Jim. It was a stone cold East Coast kitchen party, the room was full of aunts & uncles & cousins & babies, a different vibe for a couple of experimental-roots bands from the big city. So the cops show up to shut it down around midnight, but Neil from Bruce Peninsula starts handing out drumsticks to the audience and leading the songs a cappella after the PA gets unplugged. Okay, remember the drumsticks, they’re important.

Neil struggles through a show the next night in PEI. Something’s really wrong with his voice. He’s worried about laryngitis, vocal nodes. He’s literally drinking the honey we brought as merch (my parents are beekeepers), trying to fix his broken voice before the Halifax Pop Explosion, a big multi-venue festival (kind of the whole reason we’ve gone out on tour).

The night after that, we’re playing Halifax. Our drummer at the time, who’s from the east coast and met up with some old pals, got drunk. Pink Elephants, Jim Morrison drunk. He’s got it in his head that we’re supposed to sing backup during Bruce Peninsula’s set, which is totally not the case, and I have to keep leading him away from the stage. I lose him once or twice and actually need to go on stage, while BP is playing, to escort him off.

Now, I was always a bit intimidated by Bruce Peninsula. I was in awe of their music, and everybody in the band seemed a little older, cooler, more talented. Neil, who I’m friends with now, had a big, slightly scary personality.

After the show, he comes running up the stairs out the venue to the street, where I’m standing, grabbing a smoke.

Having Neil run at you is like being charged by a bear. My first thought was that he thought our drummer had fucked up his set. Which he kind of had. I thought I was going to at least get yelled at, but the way he bounded up the stairs, with adrenaline and stage sweat in his eyes, I wasn’t sure what was coming.

“I just coughed up a drumstick!”

Neil held up a mean-looking sliver of wood, a splintered piece of drumstick, about an inch and a half long. Must’ve gotten stuck in there during the unplugged frenzy at Toothless Jim’s. His voice suddenly sounded fine. He was elated. He hadn’t even noticed our drummer.

Neil’s a good dude.

Thanks!

Simon

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premiere: Lady the Beard - Am I Regine

Michael Beswetherick wrote to me about a year ago sharing a version of this story. Somehow it got lost in my crazy over-filled email inbox and he thankfully followed up with some new tracks like this one. You’ll enjoy it while you read his memories on how it came to life:

Hey Mark,

When I was three, I stepped on a beehive. My weak childlike body felt the stingy wrath of the swarm and needless to say, it hurt quite a bit. My family and I were on vacation with my neighbor’s dog at the time and the bees attacked the dog as well. I don’t think I could feel guilt at that stage in my life, but for whatever reason I feel guilty about it now. The dog is dead and he died of old age, but maybe on some level I feel like the bee stings caused him to die.

Another time as a five-year-old, I ran outside completely naked in order to catch the ice cream man. As a kid, you learn to feel shame, you’re not born with the capacity to feel it. So as a fat super stoked naked five year old in the presence of an ice cream, I did not feel shame. All I wanted was a choco taco. Those things were amazing. I still think they’re amazing.

I have memories that seem as vivid as the keyboard I’m typing this on. Hell, they’re as vivid as the words you’re reading. They exist, you can see them. They are things.

I recently moved from the west coast to the east coast (SEA -> NYC) to pursue a job, but maybe on some level, I moved physical places to move on from metaphorical ones.

I grew up in the shadows of Microsoft in the Seattle suburbs and I went to college in the actual city at the University of Washington. As certain friends moved away for college or work or whatever, their memories stayed with me. It was like I was racing my ghost in Mario Kart 64 – I could see memories of people who actually weren’t there mixed in with the present moment.

I love Seattle and I always will. I just felt like it was time to shake things up. I just felt like it was time to move on. I just felt like it was time to live without the ghosts.

Little did I understand, moving physically did not mean moving mentally. I still call and keep in touch with my friends back home. I still think about my family’s health. My mom still calls me. My brother still texts me. My dad talks to me about his life. I still know how to walk home from my elementary school.

Just because we live across the country doesn’t mean I’m actually away. For fuck’s sake, I can Skype with my family when they’re in my childhood bedroom. I can FaceTime with my friends from college when they’re just hanging out.

Yes, I’ve been making new experiences and friends in New York, but I am still very much rooted in where I am from.

With these songs, I think you are able to experience that.

Lady the Beard is a band. It started out as a kind of solo project, but it quickly grew into this beautiful collaborative effort. One of the songs on the Soundcloud is called Politics of Little League Baseball. We recorded that as a band at K Records’ Dub Narcotic studio. Mikey Farrow played bass and he destroyed it. His bass parts are melodic and rhythmic, both fun and serious. Justin Brown played guitar and he has a true ear for melody and harmony. He added parts I would have never thought of. John O’Connor laid down amazing keyboard parts and he was very careful about the tones he chose. Kessiah Gordon helped arrange the song and she came up with a lot of the drum parts – she did not record with us but her presence was felt.

So while “Politics of LLBB” was recorded in the standard vanilla band relationship sort of way, the other Lady the Beard stuff is more of the fluid open relationshipy kind of thing. I live in a pretty small apartment off the Lorimer street L train stop in Brooklyn and I record most everything there. I use a lot of sampled drums but I did actually record real drums on Corporate Portraiture in my room (I don’t think my landlord knows I have a drumset in there). Two of my very good friends Jesse Miller and Josh Serrano lent their vocal talents to that one. They live in Seattle, WA and Denton, TX respectively. Josh also wrote the lyrics to the second verse!

I recorded “Am I Regine” mostly in New York, but I had Jesse lay down some harmonies while I was home for the holidays in Seattle.

I love the collaborative process no matter what – even if it’s happening through a computer. I feel like the people who play with me on these songs give it the life that I could never give it alone.

The way I see it is like I’m just hanging out with my friends like I always did. Except instead of imagining that we are superheroes or whatever, we are imagining real music together.

As Isaac Brock once said “I’m the same as I was when I was six years old.”

Now, I don’t think I would run after the ice cream man without any clothes on, but I don’t think I would feel ashamed if I did do that.

Take care,

-Michael

PS: Big shout outs to Ephriam Nagler who engineered Politics and to Trevor Spencer who mixed it up in Bellingham. Equally large shout out to Josh Flanigan for going with us to record at Dub Narcotic and for overseeing mixing in Bellingham.

Big boy shout outs to Tom Merrill and Blake Manfre for not bitching about the excessive noises. I love you two dearly.

Also, thank you to the roommates of 5206 for putting up with all the rehearsals and I’m sorry for the time I invited nearly 100 people to that one party we had. My bad.

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premiere: Slow Talker - Mannequin

Leah Korbin wrote to me a couple weeks ago with her luminous, lovely first single with some thoughts on what powered the process of building forgiveness through her sounds.

Howdy Mark,

My name is Leah. My boyfriend Josh Stuebe and I work at a recording studio in Van Nuys, CA called Fonogenic Studios, which is in a side-building of a nail polish factory called Orly and across the street from Budweiser. Our boss uses the studio as more of a playground for his experiments (he’s a magician as well as producer), which means we’ve gotten a fair amount of downtime the past few years.

For the album I picked songs I had written between 2012 - when I left college in Nashville - to 2015, which was my second year living in Los Angeles. Each song represents a very personal experience for me.

“Mannequin” was written during one of the most painful years of my life. I wrote it to cope with the possibility of my family falling apart by trying to empathize with an outside party that was potentially ruining the relationship between my parents. Los Angeles is across the country from where my parents live, so there was little I could do to help the situation. I felt powerless to comfort my mother and confused about what was actually happening because both sides had their own narratives of what the truth was. I harbored a lot of resentment towards this person as they uprooted our lives and seemed more like a emotional blockade rather than a real person. Writing this song helped me to humanize someone whose story I didn’t know and begin to forgive them through my own narrative.

For context, I wasn’t a kid who grew up in a terrible household and turned to music because I had nowhere else to go. I had a wonderful childhood. My folks have always been supportive regarding my music ever since I picked up the violin at the age of five. It was their creative support that gave me an outlet when I needed to escape.

I’m an only child so I got all of my parent’s attention, which was a lot of pressure for someone who hated to be the center of attention. When my parents’ marriage began to strain I started to feel the burden of acting as a mediator between them. I turned to songwriting as a way to make sense of my world. Songwriting helped me understand how to be more patient, perceptive and forgiving of these issues - among other things - and gave me the strength to be there for my folks when they needed me. Although songwriting is a great tool, nothing could prepare me for the loss of the family and life I knew so well. Not to mention there was a lot of stress building up to this point. It took awhile to get out of my funk and start writing again, but, once I did, I began to heal.

Thank you!

Leah

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premiere: PASTEL - I Ache

Melancholy, meditative new tune from a young singer in SoCal who wrote me this letter to tell me some background on his take on anxiety and a “soft grunge” cure:

Hi Mark!

I’m Gabriel Brenner, a LA-based producer/singer/songwriter/visual artist, and I make music as Pastel. I started recording music my sophomore year of high school with a good friend of mine as Brengam (a splicing of Brenner and her last name, Ngamnimitthum), a starry-eyed folk-pop duo with a devout love for Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes (TBT?). Sadly, we both switched schools and distance disrupted the continuation of our project. Eventually, I was able to get my hands on a Macbook the summer before my first quarter of college, and I’ve been recording solo work on Garageband and Logic ever since.

The name “Pastel” actually stems from my anxieties about college prior to attendance. Around the time us high school seniors began our college application process, rumors started swirling about the dangers one’s social media presence could pose to our validity as college student candidates. Whispers in the hallways could be heard between class periods. “Becky got her acceptance revoked,” one said, “because she had selfies with alcohol on her Facebook.” Gasp, Becky! “Bobby got denied because he said something racist in a status.” Well, Bobby, mayhaps that was karma. Know your history, sis!

The more horror stories I gathered about other Becky’s and Bobby’s, the more my anxiety grew. Big Brother was watching, and he was probably watching me. What if the rare F-bomb I dropped on Facebook was enough to convince colleges I was a good-for-nothing scoundrel? Perhaps they would discover my Myspace-angled selfies from sixth grade and find themselves too embarrassed to accept me. I started questioning every move I’d ever made online. Realistically, I had little to hide. I was a reclusive hermit who spent his days reblogging inspo on Tumblr. Hell, I didn’t evenknow who Becky was, let alone that she liked to drink and take selfies for the ‘Gram. The pressure, however, was too much. I had to go off the grid, so I changed my name. On Facebook at least.

And what would a Tumblr-obsessed teen in 2013 change his Facebook name to? None other than “Pastel Grunge,” a combination of Pastel Goth and and Soft Grunge, two aesthetic movements birthed from the bloggers of Tumblr themselves that often lead to heated debates over what exactly constituted either. I thought it was witty enough to be the catalyst for a few chuckles, and obscure enough to evade the watchful eyes of admissions counselors. The name was a hit, and it stuck with me for the remainder of the year. I was no longer Gabe. Nay, I was Pastel.

So when it came time to develop a stage persona, it felt natural to go by Pastel. I had already cultivated a brand, even though it was one founded upon niche humor. It might seem odd that the emotionally heavy content of “I Ache” is aligned with a lighthearted stage name, but it is often said that humor and trauma are distant relatives.

“I Ache,” the first single from my upcoming self-released Bone-Weary EP, definitely deals with the trauma side of that relationship; it’s inspired by a period of months in which I was spread extremely thin emotionally and eventually crumbled underneath the weight of it all. Drawing from artists like Julianna Barwick, Perfume Genius, and FKA twigs, ‘I Ache” weaves together cavernous, atmospheric harmonies, devotional piano chords, and loose, skeletal beats, creating a heart-wrenching, cathartic rumination on stability and dependence. Directed by Hobbes Ginsberg and produced by Chloe Feller for Red Lighter Films, the visuals evoke traditional paintings of women and lush classical imagery to explore one’s emotional endurance when everything around falls apart.

“I Ache” is not exempt from humor, though. The first take of the song was actually recorded the night of Halloween in 2014. Dressed as the Domino’s Pizza logo, I repeated “I ache” over and over into the mic, summoning the traumas of the past year, and perhaps dually pining for a spooky slice of pizza.
“I Ache” is out January 15th. Bone-Weary EP out early 2016 (self-released). Watch Here. Listen Here.

Hope you enjoyed the story,

xoxo Pastel

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premiere: Steady Holiday - Your Version of Me

If you don’t fall in love with Dre Babinski upon approach, you might want to burry yourself in the sand. She’s already flying away.

premiere: Cumquat - Consciousness is my Trigger

Philly’s Kevin Sul spent most of his music life playing in punk bands, but then decided he needed to go in another direction so he branched out into experimental electronic music. He says his new project is “in the realm of electronic, noise and sugary sweet pop. I enjoy music that can mix multiple genres, or even better, take you somewhere new as a listener. For this project, called Cumquat, I’ve tried to abandon as many ‘normal’ instruments as possible to achieve this. The majority of the song is based around manipulated synth sounds, samples and found sounds. At the same time, it is still (hopefully) a catchy pop song.”

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